Community Organization and Urban Dynamics at Copan, Honduras

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For decades, many archaeologists did not consider ancient Maya centers such as Tikal, Palenque, and Copan to be cities. While today most archaeologists would agree that large Maya centers were cities, the nature of Maya urbanism is still little understood. Maya cities seem different, and in attempt to explain these differences, they have been termed "Garden Cities" and "Low-density Agrarian-Based Cities." In this poster, we employ Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to identify potential community boundaries at Copan using a Least Cost Analysis approach. After we define potential community boundaries, we apply settlement-scaling theory to contribute to broader research on Maya urbanism, and urbanism more generally. Finally, we compare these computationally-derived boundaries to ethnographically-defined boundaries (i.e, sian otots) and discuss our findings in relation to community organization and urban dynamics within and between communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25205